BP's oil leak has caused widespread damage in the Gulf of Mexico. President Obama said today: "The best way to help is to come down here and visit."

If British Petroleum succeeds in stopping the disastrous leak and begins trying to pose as a company with cautious inclinations, we should recognize it as an agent of our peculiarly American luck.

I say that because disaster and blood sacrifice are essential to the awakening process that leads to needed change in our democracy. The murders of Emmett Till, Medgar Evers and the four little girls blown into eternity in a Birmingham church one Sunday morning were fundamental to the country's recognition of the ruthless terrorist forces in the segregated South. After those moments, the plight of Negroes could no longer be ignored.

The spill poisoning the Gulf of Mexico in mass media neon may parallel those fateful murders.

Till's mother decided to give her boy an open casket Chicago funeral. She wanted everyone near and far to see what had happened to a brash boy for supposedly making a pass at a white woman in Mississippi. Her Emmett had been brutalized and dropped in a river. The water did the rest.

The murderous blast killing four little girls a few years later was rigged by a domestic terrorist nicknamed "Dynamite Bob." They were blown out of this world shortly after Martin Luther King gave his tragic but optimistic "I Have Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Each of the martyrs was of indelible importance to the passage of the civil rights law. Their reduction to blood and gore clarified everything that was wrong.

Hidden beneath the greasy water, the dead birds, mucked-to-death fish and the wounds to the livelihoods of those who live on the Gulf Coast is more than a glimmer of good luck: The BP spill could be the tipping point tragedy - the one that finally makes us get serious about protecting ourselves, our environment and all that is needed for the country to remain a front-runner in world competition. Because this time, the dangers of oil proved themselves deadly and so much closer than the big spills by Exxon and other companies.

It also pulls off the mask of the Republicans who chanted "Drill, baby, drill" at their convention in 2008. Though she might now pretend to have never said any such thing, Sarah Palin, the wealthiest demented cheerleader among us, was frequently caught on tape encouraging that chant during the presidential campaign.

I doubt that the Democrats will sit on their hands and allow the country to forget the meaning of such recent history and the impact of irresponsible policies put in place during Republican control of Washington under George W. Bush. The elephants never seemed to encounter any form of high-earning business about which they had reservations, or found in need of being regulated.

This will all work out well for the country because the grand dream of American capitalism is that the profit motive can fuse with ethics and morality.

Through the wonder of our free press, we all know that there was far too much collusion between Big Oil and the federal agencies conceived to protect the public by removing the irresponsible greed that floats in the public waters like elephantine chunks of excrement.

Yes, there are and always have been smart and reasonable Republicans, but they have been pushed from the microphone by brain-dead ideologues like Sarah Palin.

"Drill, baby, drill" should become an unintentional death knell. Why? The excrement has hit the fan and spread through the gulf. What is clearly seen will not soon be forgotten.